


Sweetness and Light

by KaenOkami



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Agender Character, Angst, Canon - Anime, Character Study, Child Abuse, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Magic, Recovery, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Souls, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:48:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24567985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaenOkami/pseuds/KaenOkami
Summary: The colors of Crona's life have always been bleak and discouraging. It's only when they're safe with their friends that they can begin to see hope and value in the color of their own soul.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 41





	Sweetness and Light

Crona had always known that they were different, and that different wasn’t a good thing. 

They were no witch, that was for certain. They remembered being a very young child, watching in wonder as Medusa worked her magic, while it could still be a thing of wonder and not abject terror. When she left them alone in their room (not _that room,_ of course, their own sparse but bright bedroom), the thought of it would excite them so much that without really thinking about it, they would hop about the small space trying to mirror their mother.

Medusa had found it amusing, if that was the correct word. Crona often had to wonder whether their mother felt anything at all, as they went through day after day seeing nothing but a blank face and cold eyes when they looked at her. But just when they would be about to decide for sure that that cold went all the way through her — down past her snake-marked skin and straight into whatever passed for her heart — they would be startled by a sudden spark of emotion from her. 

Sometimes it would be a flash of fervor in her eyes that turned them as bright as fire for just a moment. Other times, more fearful times, it would be a rush of anger shown by bared teeth, or at worst a flat-palmed slap against the wall when an experiment failed. Or most often, that thin, spreading grin that always made them think of a needle being sunk into their neck. 

But on the rarest of occasions, she would laugh, with only the slightest air of malice detectable in it, and it would always catch them by surprise.

“Crona,” and though the voice was impossibly soft, it made them jump and fall to the flat cement floor in the middle of their swing. Dazed, they looked up to see Medusa leaning in the door of their bedroom, smiling that lazy half-smile that came to her face when the full face-stretching grin could not quite be brought to bear. “What are you doing?”

They were four years old, then, and had abandoned their wooden sword — their only toy — to try and imitate the waving, sinuous movements of their mother’s spellcasting. They did not yet know the feeling of a metal hilt in their hands, and when they blushed, their cheeks still turned pink with red blood. They blinked up at her, not excited, but not yet knowing to fear, either.

“I’m doing what you do, with the snakes and arrows. If I try hard enough, then magic will come out. Will mine be purple like yours?”

It was one of the very few occasions in Crona’s life that they saw their mother throw back her head and laugh, loudly and genuinely, and they watched in startled silence until she was done. 

“Oh, Crona,” she said when she was finished, still with a note of laughter in her voice. “Oh, my child. You’re no witch. You’re half-human, or close enough to human, and that half of your blood overrode anything of your witch blood that mattered. You’re never going to perform magic no matter how hard you try.”

Crona’s eyes widened. “What? But...but why? How do you know?”

Medusa would never encourage questions from her child, but they were still young enough that she wasn’t punishing them for asking, either. Either way, she always gave an answer, whether Crona liked it or not. 

“Because the potential for magic is inert inside you. Because your soul is simply neither human nor witch.”

“O-Oh. Then...what am I?”

“Why...you aren’t much of anything at all, I suppose. Though I expect you’ll learn the names for your particular sort of nothing soon enough. Come: the witch mass will begin soon. You want to know of _my_ heritage? Listen and watch.”

Crona obeyed. They looked, and they listened, at first clinging to their mother’s pant leg and then lingering shakily at her side. The witch mass was an oppressive swathe of black and purple, in both its architecture and in the garb and souls of its participants, all of whom seemed to have the same disdainful sneer to shoot towards Crona. And they all had the same words to hiss under their breaths at them.

_Mutt. Freak. Mongrel. Experiment. Half-breed._

Crona was out of place, even more so with every passing year, a spot of greyish-black drabness among all the other colors. They were growing older, and...better able to sense such things, if not smarter, and falling into routines they could deal with, if not stronger. Their veins — the flushing of their cheeks when embarrassed — were solid slate in color. Even the pink of their hair was quickly losing its babyish vibrancy and softness, and instead turning pale and brittle with repeated bouts of hunger.

More importantly than that, they were now learning the colors of the souls. They liked the sights of those much better than the sight of their own reflection. 

Kishin souls were red. They learned to associate the color red with eating. Sometimes they would have to clear Kishin out of their territory, to get rid of any competition for the feast of human souls, and when they died Ragnarok would gobble them up to keep them out of the hands of Shibusen weapons, all the while complaining about how bitter and puny they tasted. 

Human souls were blue, like the candy or jelly treats that they had never been permitted to eat themself. They were big and bright, and Ragnarok gulped them down with glee. All Crona saw was red still, though: the constant aching in their distended belly would only be sated when the floors, walls, and ground were splattered in that same lurid red as an evil soul.

And witch souls were purple, dark and rich and royal. They radiated power and pride. Even though Crona had only ever seen one of them with their own eyes — that frightened woman with the dual-colored eyes and scorpion-tailed soul, that they had cut down in the desert to make Ragnarok soar, had she known them? — they could feel them every time they were near a witch, their mother especially. Half their blood sang at it, and the other half recoiled in their veins from it. They were aware that that might be redundant to say, now that their blood was no longer their own, nor even _them_ at all, but it was what they felt in every inch of their body all the same.

So many souls, passing in front of their eyes in a sick and visceral rainbow of gore and light. 

It never seemed to make them any stronger, or less afraid, even within the comfortable stupor of madness. Like their mother, they wondered why that was, though their wonder was ringed with monotone sorrow instead of their mother’s undercurrent of frustration.

What must their own soul look like, Crona wondered? They who were neither human nor witch, they who were too stunted and weak to become anything greater. Their soul must certainly be the same grey as the shadows under their eyes, as shriveled as the face of a corpse. 

The thought made something twist inside their chest, so of course it stuck on an endless loop in their brain. They would never succeed, but still they had to keep struggling. They had no choice but to move by their mother’s will.

So Crona grew up, choked by their mother’s dark snakes around their throat, and drowned in the cold red of Ragnarok’s soul and the endless blood that fed it. What little sweetness and light they had known in their very earliest years was forgotten entirely beneath it.

~0~

Years later, still a child but feeling impossibly old, Crona still hadn’t managed to reach it again. They were just starting to get used to the novelty of calmness and peace. Of being surrounded by people who had no crushing expectations of them, who only wanted to help them figure out what it was that _they_ wanted to do. 

They knew what they _didn’t_ want to do, at least, and they supposed that that would be an acceptable start. They did not want to kill anyone. They did not want to cause people pain. They did not want to be anything like their mother. 

Ragnarok would talk sometimes about how it would make them more useful if they managed to pick up some magic, and they should keep trying to unlock some special hidden ability of their heritage. Crona was of the opinion that he had been playing too many of Soul’s video games. 

There was no grand evolution coming for them, no secret power. They were still an empty husk inside, still that grey and rotted body beneath their pale skin. Even their capacity to wield a weapon at all — according to Doctor Stein’s examinations of them — only came from Medusa’s experiments on their soul, all her cutting and twisting and drugging until they were a functioning mockery of a natural-born meister. It wasn’t something that would fade away from them, or make them fall behind the other Shibusen students. But still, it was just one more thing that set Crona apart from their friends.

Right now they were nestled into the living room couch, and had stayed there so long they had managed to make the corner space warm: an unusual achievement for someone as cold-blooded as they were. The apartment was painted all in pale and calming shades: oranges, greens, and yellows. Blair, a perpetual comfort, was curled up on their lap and purring at the way they idly scratched her ears. She was a familiar, her soul closer to witch than their own, but her purple was soft and friendly. Enticing smells were coming from the kitchen; Soul was trying out a new pasta recipe that made enough to feed six.

They didn’t know how long Maka’s voice had been background noise at the other side of the room, like pleasant music, while she talked with Black Star and Tsubaki about the upcoming quiz on meister-specific abilities like Soul Perception. (Crona enjoyed studying with Maka or Soul alone, but group discussions were still more often than not too much to deal with.) But it was long enough to exhaust study topics enough for Black Star to slip in more and more unrelated questions without Maka or Tsubaki directing him back to their work.

“Hey, Maka, what’s a soul look like?”

Maka snickered, and teased, “Why’re you asking? Been so long since you got a Kishin soul that you forgot?”

Soul snorted, and even Tsubaki smiled. But Black Star crossed his arms and glared at her. “It’s not like _that._ I just mean, do they feel different or whatever? Or look different when they’re still inside you, or what?”

Maka deemed that a fair question, and stopped to think. “Well, there’s...different feelings, I guess. Humans feel normal to me, because their souls are more or less like mine. Kishin souls are easy to detect, they just feel so _wrong._ And witch souls...I’d say they feel wrong too, but that’s not quite right. They’re powerful, and they feel like getting kicked in the gut.”

Crona gulped. Medusa had never kicked _them,_ but just her presence could drop her child to their knees. They certainly understood that. 

Over in the kitchen, Soul noisily slurped down a noodle to test whether it was done. “I bet they’ve got more flavor than a regular Kishin soul, too. Can’t wait to try one.”

Tsubaki nodded, turning a page in the textbook, and Black Star thought of something else. “Can you tell the difference between people just by their souls? Like, me and Tsubaki, do we feel different?”

Maka thought for a second. “...Kind of? Tsubaki has a very calm soul. Feeling it is like...how you feel after you drink a glass of cold water? And you, Black Star, yours is _way_ more active, like being static shocked. Brighter, even.”

“Brighter? Like their colors?” Crona could swear they saw Black Star’s ears perk up in alarm. “I thought all species had one color.”

“It’s...hard to explain,” Maka said, rubbing the back of her neck. She was around friends, but she still got a nervous smile on her face when there was something she didn’t quite know. “A lot of souls look the same, but there’s some with differences, if there’s special qualities to the person — ”

“Hey, what about Crona?” Black Star looked up at them, and the whole apartment seemed to look with him. Crona froze. “You’re half witch, so you’d be...ah, fuck, what is it between blue and purple? Indican?”

“Indigo!” Blair piped up, sounding proud of herself.

“Yeah, that! Exactly!”

Crona couldn’t answer; their throat had closed up and their breath was starting to come quicker. They didn’t know how they could say it, but then, they didn’t have to, did they? 

“It’s not that!”

Yes, Maka could see it, of course she could: the shriveled piece of viscera that limply pumped their power through, rotting grey and black. Ugly and weak, their soul wasn’t stronger than hers or anyone’s —

“It’s beautiful!”

Crona sat up straight so fast that Blair nearly leapt off their lap, eyes wide. Had they really heard right? Was Maka really smiling at them like that?

“I’ve never seen another soul like it! It’s big and bright, too, and reaching out to feel it...it’s like waiting for someone who’s about to give you a nice hug.”

Crona stared. “O-Oh...there’s...I’m half-breed, so I’m sure there’s other souls just like mine...”

Soul smirked, and shook his head. “Sorry, Crona. Not how it works. You’re one of a kind.”

Black Star was grinning. “Cool! What color do they get?”

Maka’s eyes were glittering like precious emeralds. “Your soul’s pink, Crona. And it feels warm and sweet.”

They felt their cheeks flush dark. There was a strange but welcome sensation deep in their chest, as if a heavy weight had been bloodlessly excised from it, to let them breathe easier than they ever had before. 

_Pink?_

“What...kind of pink?”

“Like a diamond. Like a blanket.” Maka’s — everyone’s — eyes were always so kind. “Shining and gentle at the same time. I’ve never been a fan of the color itself...but yours is the nicest shade I’ve ever seen.”

Their heart was fluttering. So they’d all been wrong, all this time...they’d never dreamed anything so beautiful could be resting inside this body of theirs. But Maka could see it for herself, and Maka would never lie. 

Crona played with a lock of their hair, trying to imagine a brighter and softer color glowing in their chest. They couldn’t keep a smile off their face.

_Pink. Alive. Warm._

“Maka...thank you.”


End file.
